Page:The works of Plato, A new and literal version, (vol 1) (Cary, 1854).djvu/64

52 the earth, to which the good and the had will respectively go after death, and exhorts his friends to use every endeavour to acquire virtue and wisdom in this life, "for," he adds, "the reward is noble and the hope great."

Having thus brought his subject to a conclusion, Socrates proposes to bathe himself, in order not to trouble others to wash his dead body. Crito thereupon asks if he has any commands to give, and especially how he would be buried, to which he, with his usual cheerfulness, makes answer, "Just as you please, if only you can catch me," and then, smiling, he reminds them that after death he shall be no longer with them, and begs the others of the party to be sureties to Crito for his absence from the body, as they had been before bound for his presence before his judges.

After he had bathed, and taken leave of his children and the women of his family, the officer of the Eleven comes in to intimate to him that it is now time to drink the poison. Crito urges a little delay, as the sun had not yet set, but Socrates refuses to make himself ridiculous by shewing such a fondness for life; the man who is to administer the poison is therefore sent for, and on his holding out the cup, Socrates, neither trembling nor changing colour or countenance at all, but, as he was wont, looking stedfastly at the man, asked if he might make a libation to any one, and being told that no more poison than enough had been mixed, he simply prayed that his departure from this to another world might be happy, and then drank off the poison readily and calmly. His friends, who had hitherto with difficulty restrained themselves, could no longer control the outward expressions of grief, to which Socrates said, "What are you doing, my friends? I, for this reason chiefly, sent away the women, that they might not commit any folly of this kind. For I have heard that it is right to die with good omens. Be quiet, therefore, and bear up."

When he had walked about for a while his legs began to grow heavy, so he laid down on his back, and his body, from